Sir Chris Hoy's debut season in motorsport

Now that he’s retired from winning cycling gold medals, Sir Chris Hoy
aims to make his mark in motorsport.

When Sir Chris Hoy announced his retirement from international cycling last month, it was done with a modesty typical of Britain’s greatest Olympian. “I feel like I’ve got every last ounce of effort and energy out of myself. I made it to London and I was successful in London, but I think maybe people don’t realise just quite how much that took out of me,” said Hoy to the assembled throng of journalists.

What next for the man who dominated his sport for so many years? Or, put another way, what does Sir Chris Hoy do to relax? The answer is to find a new sport in which to compete, and in doing so to fulfil an ambition to take his passion for cars and driving to a new level.

“I love cars, I love racing bikes, I’ve still got that competitive instinct even though I’ve retired from racing bikes, and I’ve driven on circuits for a number of years now, just on track days, so to combine the two and to have a little bit of fun… it’s just a great chance for me,” the 37-year-old says when we meet at Brands Hatch in Kent, a week after he announced his retirement from cycling. He’s at Brands as part of his preparation for the SR1 Cup, a new championship devised by British sports car maker Radical especially for novice racing drivers. It was through Roger Green, Radical’s marketing manager, that Hoy’s entry into the SR1 Cup came about.

Hoy explains: “I was telling him that I’d love to give motor racing a go and I just didn’t know how to get into it – I think a lot of people are like that, they’ve done track days but just don’t know how they could get into motorsport – and he said, 'Well, this is the perfect opportunity’.”

Hoy’s first taste of competitive motorsport took place in March when he drove in the Mazda6 Celebrity Challenge, an event supporting the Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne. “I was the only non-Aussie there,” he explains, admitting that he was also penalised for “a little infringement”. I ask if “infringement” is a polite word for “crash”. Hoy laughs. “Do you know what, I can’t actually remember the exact incident because there were so many that day, bumping and barging… It was just a bit crazy.”

It’s unlikely that the SR1 Cup, which begins at Brands Hatch on June 1 before visiting Oulton Park, Cadwell Park and Snetterton later in the year, will be quite as physical. After all, each of the 20 or so entrants has paid £37,500 for their season’s racing, that price including everything from getting a race licence and mechanical support, to the car itself, which is akin to a mini Le Mans racer.

“The cars are very simple really,” says Hoy. “They’re just under 500kg, so very light, it’s a Hayabusa Suzuki motorbike engine, six-speed sequential gearbox, the tyres are basic road tyres – there’s not a lot of grip in them and that teaches you about the dynamics of the car.”

Don’t be fooled, however. As a product of Radical, the SR1 has serious pedigree. This is, after all, the same company that builds LMP2 race cars for Le Mans, so it’s no surprise the SR1 looks like it’s set to blast down the Mulsanne straight. It has wings and spoilers to create downforce through high-speed corners and, with 185bhp on tap from its four-cylinder bike engine, can accelerate from 0-60mph in 3.6sec.

I also note that in its tiny cockpit are two seats. And so it is that with all the grace of a drunken stag party I do my best to slide in alongside Hoy without sitting on one of our national treasure’s national treasures (stop sniggering at the back; I mean his legs). Not all that easy when you consider that Hoy’s thighs are so big that he has to use a smaller steering wheel than everybody else on the grid just to give him room to drive.

Our outing on to the 1.2-mile Indy circuit coincides with rain starting to fall, not that this appears to deter Hoy from doing his best Sebastian Vettel impersonation. Rain or no rain, it’s immediately obvious that the six-times Olympic gold medallist and 11-times World Champion is already as well adapted to shuffling four wheels around a circuit just as ably as he does two.

Perhaps that’s no surprise when you learn that he’s had advice from Paul Di Resta, David Coulthard, Martin Brundle and Sir Jackie Stewart, and that one of Radical’s instructors is Andy Wallace, the 1988 Le Mans winner.

Wallace is clearly impressed with his student: “He takes what you say and immediately turns it into reality, and you think, How the hell does he do that? Because there’s not much in common between cycling and motor racing.”

It’s a question I put to Hoy, particularly in regard to preparation. “The thing with my cycling career is that I’ve been able to train as hard as I possibly can, and do everything I possibly can to be in the best shape on the day, so I know that I can take confidence from that. I know that I’ve done all that I can possibly do. It’s very different for this because there’s limitation on what you can do, the amount of time you can spend in the car. So I do feel very different going out on the track here to going out on the track on my bike.”

That might be, but glimpses of such preparation can still be seen, not least when he explains how he uses an in-car camera to record all of his on-track outings: “You can go home at night and analyse your lines, look at things you’re doing right, things you’re doing wrong, look at the timing, the splits, all the different data you can take from it, and just try and learn.” Realising how determined he sounds, Hoy laughs. But he insists that this is not a new career. Rather, it’s a hobby that reminds him of the buzz he got from his early days of BMX racing.

We also discuss Formula One, and how Hoy rates Lewis Hamilton as top of the current driver line-up. “He wants to win so much, you can see it in him, he’s determined and no matter what happens it’s not about the fame and the glamour, it’s about winning motor races,” he says.

Given his extraordinary career, I can’t imagine Hoy’s own ambitions in the SR1 Cup being any different. Again he’s modest. “I reckon mid-pack is doable but there’s some of the guys here who are putting a lot of time and effort into it – and I’m not making excuses – but they are clearly pretty handy drivers.”

Having sat in the car with Hoy, I can’t help thinking there’s an element of bluffing going on here. This is a man used to performing at a level no mere mortal can comprehend. Surely the fierce competitive instinct of Sir Chris Hoy will emerge when the lights go green on June 1?

“I’ll try to be sensible,” he says with a grin. “I say that now but we’ll see. When the flag goes down we’ll see what happens.”

There’s still a space left on the grid to race Sir Chris Hoy in the Radical SR1 Cup. For details visit the Radical Sportscars website